Mar 24, 2012

The Sun gets flagging angry about gay rights

A story from today's Sun claims a council has "axed" a "flag tribute to troops" and disciplined a member of staff who tried to fly a flag at half mast:

"COUNCIL bosses were branded "a disgrace" last night for carpeting a worker who lowered the town hall flag after six British soldiers died in Afghanistan. Weeks ago the same council flew a rainbow flag in support of gay rights."

It is unclear what the second sentence has to do with the first. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the issue of gay rights quite clearly has nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of this particular story.

Yet along the way, The Sun even prompts a military widow to comment on the gay rights angle:

"They promote gay rights but have piled into an ex-serviceman for honouring six guys who died fighting for their country..."

What's more, it seems the facts of the underlying story may not stand up to even casual scrutiny.

The story is actually about disciplinary action against a man who, we are told, "was served with disciplinary papers alleging "gross misconduct"... he is... being probed for failing to carry out a "thorough health and safety assessment" before flying the council's own flag at half-mast".

Once upon a time a "health and safety gone mad" story about an over-officious council controlling who is allowed to fly what flags on the town hall would have been enough for a tabloid without having to turn its ire on gay rights or criticise a council for not respecting dead servicemen. For the record, that latter point is also far from the truth.

In the closing paragraphs of the story we are told:

"...the flag of the local Mercian Regiment was at half-mast over the town hall yesterday... A council spokesman said: "We have a strong association with the Mercians. It is policy to lower the flag in the tragic event of loss of life."

So the facts of the story are that a council didn't "axe flag tribute to troops" at all. But they did support gay rights. We've seen the pictures.